What Could Have Been / Risk of Rain

Both games have a surprisingly large amount of unused content despite their untroubled development cycles.

Risk Of Rain

Base Game

• Survivors:
  • The Heavy, an early version of the Enforcer. He resembled the Commando, but was a bit bulkier and wielded a shotgun.
  • The Pyro, who wielded a flamethrower. Three of their skills survived into the final release. Their third skill turns their flames green and gives them a Life Drain effect. They still exist in the game, in the form of the Bloated Survivor.
  • The Cyborg, who is believed to be an early incarnation of the Mercenary. He moved by floating above the floor, was able to teleport and fired electric blasts from his hands.
    • Both the Pyro and the Cyborg were revived by the Starstorm mod as completed survivors, and will eventually return in the sequel mod for Risk of Rain 2, Starstorm 2.
  • The first incarnation of the Chef was a humanoid who wielded a cleaver like a sword and could unleash a glowing Megaton Punch.
  • The Huntress was going to have the ability to switch to a "Dark Mode" that would give her another set of abilities. It also changed her color scheme to gray and yellow.
• Items:
  • A whole set of items was removed between early alpha and release. The Hero's set was a Shout-Out to The Legend of Zelda, resembling Link's hat, garb and boots, respectively. They would empower their wearer when they had low health. They were presumably removed to avoid problems with Nintendo. They were going to have a purple rarity, like the White Undershirt (M). A fourth item, the Hero's Scarf, remained in the game, but was instead renamed as the "Hermit's Scarf".
• Enemies:
  • The Suicider (AKA Exploder in SS) is a tiny Action Bomb that was supposed to pursue the player and detonate near them.
  • The Mimic (AKA Security Chest in SS) disguised as chests and attacked when you got too close to it. It would also drop an item when killed.
  • There are Degraded Boss versions of the Imp Overlord and the Magma Worm that have half the health of their boss counterparts.
  • There was a small gelatinous cube that would spawn instead of Lemurians in the Hive Cluster. It was probably replaced by the Gup.
  • The Bots were humanoid robots the size of a normal Lemurian. They resembled the Temple Guards, so they would've probably spawned in the Temple of the Elders.
  • The Eye (AKA Overseer in SS) resembled the Imp Overlord, but its body was rounder and completely white. It was also able to fly.
  • The Snow Golems would've been able to fire energy blasts from their eyes. The sequel revisited that concept, giving the Stone Golems a ranged attack.
  • Archer Bugs were at one point supposed to emerge from their hives, which would fire them like a gun.
• Bosses:
  • The Post (AKA Wayfarer in SS) resembled the Clay Men, but was much bigger and had a lamp for a head instead of the Men's urns. It was apparently an early version of the Ancient Wisp.
  • The Pale One was a pale quadruped that could teleport and deploy organic bear traps. It was also an Expy of Iosa from Iji, sharing her skin color and back spikes.
  • The Abscinder was a Magma Worm-sized caterpillar that would separate its segments into more Abscinders, like the Eater of Worlds.
  • The Scaleless Wyvern was a massive winged beast that resembled a cross between an Evolved Lemurian and a Spitter. It flew around the player and fired a green beam from its mouth.
  • The Totem (AKA Mechanical Totem in SS) was a metal obelisk with four faces, each of them unleashing a different attack.
  • There were plans to add a Giant Enemy Crab as a boss. Only its sprites were added and all but one of them were removed in a patch. The boss was revived in Starstorm as the Sand Crab King. The concept was also revived in Risk of Rain 2's first DLC, Survivors of the Void, in the form of the hyperlethal Void Devastator.
  • Providence's boss fight was reworked from scratch. Originally, he was much bigger and stayed static throughout his fight, firing projectiles at the player. According to Word of God, it was reworked as it wasn't very fun to fight, comparing the fight to "smacking a board". He was also vastly different from his final version, resembling a black-skinned and slender Parent that floated above the floor and wore clothing. The only things shared between both incarnations of Providence was the halo in his head and the black skin. A remnant of the old Providence can be seen in the Temple of Elders, as the percentage-based Shrines of Blood bear his original version's visage.

Risk of Rain 2

Base Game

• Game:
  • An early iteration of the game was 2D like the first game, only instead of being focused around the Survivors escaping from Petrichor V, it was a group of monsters that wanted to leave the planet despite Providence's prohibitions.
• Survivors:
  • The first game's HAN-D and the Bandit exist in the game's code in an unfinished state, but HAN-D can sometimes be seen in the survivor select screen's background. Bandit became a playable character in the Anniversary update with an adjusted moveset and a new model, but his original pre-Anniversary version was preserved as many modders made their own Bandit versions using it as a base.
  • The Sniper also exists in the files, but is vastly more incomplete than the other unused survivors, as his model is untextured with broken animations. They eventually added the Railgunner as a (flat-out stated) Spiritual Successor in many ways to the Sniper, both to give a unique spin on the original's gameplay and so that they didn't invalidate any mods that re-added the Sniper to the game.
  • An "Assassin" character can be found in the files, though it's such an early and unfinished version that its model is just a simple placeholder made of untextured polygons and its moveset is nothing more than a rough proof-of-concept.
  • There were plans to bring back the Enforcer, but he was scrapped early in development, with a single finished skill and a white square for a model as the only traces of his existence.
  • A poll was run on the official Risk of Rain Discord server to decide whether 1.0's new character would be one of the six currently unimplemented survivors from the previous game or a brand new one. The winner ended up being the latter option. The developers have clarified that the other survivors could still be implemented later down the line.
    • The poll also mentioned a few ideas for what the new character could look like, none of which have been implemented at time of writing: A "Chemist" who could mix together chemicals to modify their abilities, a melee "Spearman" with long range who needed to hit the enemy with the tip of the spear in order to deal the most damage, a "Weaver" who creates hologram clones that replicate their attacks and could move them around and swap places with them, and the "Paladin," a warrior creature from the planet who worships the Survivor from the first game and has armor built from pieces of the Contact Light. A very unfinished version of the Paladin can be found in the files, where's it's just a blue Beetle Guard with the ability to create a shield that blocks attacks.
• Items:
  • The Wicked Ring and the Jar of Souls from the first game exist in an incomplete state.
  • There's an earlier version of the Effigy of Grief that acted more like a Warbanner, spawning one for each level up. It's also a normal item instead of an equipment.
  • There's an unused equipment known as the Reaper's Remorse, which was intended to summon a deadly ghost revolver that fired six shots, doubling its damage with every kill. It was probably a Shout-Out to Deadbolt.
• Monsters:
  • Early in the game's development, when it was still a 2D game, there were plans for a Spider Tank enemy.◊
  • There's several unused car-like enemies. At least two of them were meant to be Clay enemies.
  • The Clay Men from the first game also exist in this one, but they do not spawn in-game and do not have hitboxes. They can be easily restored through mods.
  • The Archaic Wisp (The purple wisps that appeared instead of the Greater Wisps in the latter areas of the first game) is in the files. It's fully functional, but unused. It's also easily restored through mods.
  • There's an unused "Invincible" variant of the Stone Golem that has over 2 million HP.
  • There's unused crystalline Beetles and Beetle Guards. It's unknown where they were meant to be encountered in.
  • There are unused Elites, like the Frenzied Elites from the first game, that were faster than their counterparts and could teleport to the player's location, and Fortune elites, with glimmering bodies that were supposed to spawn in the Gilded Coast. The latter even had an Elite equipment item coded, called Coven of Gold. As the Fortune elites were never added, Coven of Gold's item icon was removed when the Artifacts update was released, but the item still exists and can be added through console commands.
• Bosses:
  • There's an unused early version of the Grandparent, as well as an unfinished boss item for it called the Ancestral Incubator.
  • The Ancient Wisp is in the files with a full model, but has no AI and its attacks are unfinished. However, it too has been modded back in.
• Stages:
  • The original pre-Anniversary version of Commencement still exists in the game files, but is impossible to reach without console commands or mods.
  • The Prismatic Trials lobby is much bigger than what is visible. It also has an unique and bright skybox that isn't seen anywhere else.
  • Many of the stages are dozens of times larger than their playable areas and extend far beyond what's possible to see from the in-game region (with Scorched Acres being perhaps the most extreme case of this). It's hard to tell whether more parts of some stages were meant to be explorable - most of the first Titanic Plains' skybox has fully defined collision geometry, but it is an outlier in this regard; most other stages have little to no collision geometry beyond their playable regions, and only a few look like they may have been designed with the intention of being explorable. The mod Aerolt lets players explore normally inaccessible regions of levels with its "No Clipping" mode. (You'll need to fire after enabling or disabling it to move.) Note that some stages (e.g., the second Titanic Plains - the one with the symbols in the skybox) are extremely aggressive about teleporting the player back into bounds, while others tend to be pretty lax about it (to the extent that you may need to turn no clipping mode back on to get back in bounds).

Survivors of the Void

• Survivors:
  • Survivors of the Void has files related to an unused survivor known as the Warden◊, or "ward" for short. He was an android who wielded two-pronged electrified batons. It seems he was scrapped late in development, as he has completed skills and alternate loadout icons, including one that shows him in full body. According to Word of God from Ghor, the Warden was originally outsourced to another developer, and one of the reasons he wasn't added to the expansion was because the devs felt the Warden didn't fit in the game and wasn't fun enough, resembling more an Overwatch character than a normal survivor. He also revealed the Warden was originally cut back in Early Access.
  • The DLC added a second skin for the Commando◊ that's inaccessible without modding the game. It's known as "Helot" in the game files, as a possible reference to the Halo series.
• Items
  • There's an unused Lunar item called the "Blessing of Terrafirmae", that resembles a pair of crystalline butterfly wings. It has no effect.
  • The most noticeable is an entire set of steampunk-like items that interacted with each other. The centerpiece item (which resembles an Energy Cell) apparently spawned "orbs" on use, and the items would upgrade it.
  • There's an unusable equipment item known as the Overloading Excavator, that was meant to fire an irradiating beam that would damage those near the target.
  • There's a fully functional Lunar equipment called the "Elegy of Extinction", resembling a tiny Lunar golem with hands and ears. Its effect is to spawn a blue orb that allows entrance to the Bazaar Between Time for free. It has a 140 second cooldown.
  • At one point, Void items were going to be scrappable, turning into "Strange Scrap" that could presumably be used in Void versions of printers. Each Strange Scrap had a colorful core that indicated its rarity (White, Green, Red, Yellow and Purple).
• Monsters:
  • An unfinished enemy called the "Assassin" was found in the files of the expansion, along with an associated Monster Log. It too has been modded back in.
  • It seems the expansion nearly added a new version of the first game's Frenzied Elites but they were scrapped again, leaving behind traces of their Aspect, named "Beyond the Limits" and an unique Elite icon.
• Bosses:
  • The Xi Construct from Survivors of the Void has an earlier iteration known as the Major Construct. Unlike the final version, this one was an extending obelisk.
  • The Void Devastator has an unused model known as "SuperMegaCrabBody◊", which has three eyes and a spikier body. It's uncertain if it was a stronger variant or an earlier version of it.
• Stages:
  • There was a completely different version of the Void Locus before the current one. This can also be modded back in.
• Music:
  • Composer Chris Christodoulou originally envisioned the 1:20 outro to "The Rain Formerly Known as Purple" as a full 12-minute orchestral suite in dedication to the song's namesake and inspiration, Prince. It is unknown if this version of the song exists.